THE NEW JOURNALISM

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At the risk of sounding ancient, I see myself today as part of the penumbral generation in journalism. We were the guys who joined print, ran around with pad and pen for years before switching to mike and lapel. After eleven years and a bit in television, and seven years in print, one has been fortunate to have a bird-eye's view to the dramatic changes that have unfolded in Indian journalism. Much has changed, some for the good, some not so good. There is an energy and robustness to the new journalism that I believe is a huge positive: you can accuse the television camera of being intrusive, but you cannot fault it for being dynamic and, as we have seen in the Jessica Lal case, a driving force in our democracy. At the same time, the manic competition has had its pitfalls. One of these is the definition of....

Sting In The Tail ......

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Oh no, not another sting operation.. the cynics were at it again within moments of us airing the stories of netas for sale in Uttar Pradesh. But this wasn't just another sting catching some hapless local sub-inspector off-guard. These were MLAs and ministers being bared before the viewer, elected representatives who are expected to observe the highest standards of morality. Nor was this a case of entrapment. The CNN-IBN team along with the investigators from DIG (Dedicated Investigators Group) had been working on the stories for months. This was not a fishing expedition, but was based on reports that the politicians involved had a track record of criminality and corruption that needed to be exposed. Nor was this an exercise aimed at titillating the viewer, or raising the TRPs (stings don't increase the ratings of channels, else an India tV might have been the number one Hindi channel by now).....

The Love of Cricket

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I write this while watching the Lahore India-Pak one dayer like millions of other Indians. When you have cricket on air, "news" in the conventional sense seems boring, even irrelevant. Twenty years ago, I might have seen myself as just one of a handful of cricket nuts, someone who would line up hours before a test match at the Wankhede stadium just to catch a glimpse of my heroes. Today, it seems that the entire country is filled with cricket addicts. More importantly, cricket is no longer a seasonal sport. Switch on your television set, and there is a good chance that there is some international cricket match being played somewhere in the world. This proliferation of the game has had its impact, not just on the way the game is played but also on the manner in which it is covered in the media. Sports, and cricket....

In Search of the Middle Ground

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I must confess that I never quite expected the kind of response that the last blog I wrote got. A majority of those who have written in seem to feel that the cameraperson who covered the Patiala self-immolation was irresponsible and that he should have first made an attempt to rescue the individual instead of keeping the tape rolling. I appreciate the arguments that several of you have made and also the vigour with which they have been expressed. Its a tribute to our robust democracy that there are so many Indians who want to join public debate, who express themselves so freely on contentious issues. I remember when I did The Big Fight, one criticism of the programme was that there was too much heat, not enough light. My argument was that this is not the United Kingdom, where people have genteel fireside chats. In India, you tend to....